Social distinction

“ Both grow out of the necessities of our existence and relations. We have individual rights based on the fact of our individual being; and we have social duties resulting from our connection, in the bonds of society, with other individuals who have similar rights. ”

“ Here a word must be said about the subjective aspect of society, which, in its objective aspect, as we have seen, is merely the struggle and process of adjustment. What is the relation of adjustment to sympathy and to understanding, to communication and to concerted purpose, to the evolution of a social constraint through which the community controls and shapes the individual, to cooperation and to social organization? ”

“ Would he be admitted to an equal share in your political rights?—would he ever be allowed to cross the threshold of your doors?—would any of you give your daughter to his son, or your son to his daughter?—would you, in any one particular, admit him to the footing of equality which any man with a white skin would claim, whose ability and worth had so raised him from the lower degrees of the social scale. ”

“ His career stands for and illustrates the greatest of our national principles,—the principle of equality,—not the equality of birth, not the equality of social station, but the equality of opportunity. ”

“ The modification of men's moral natures, caused by the continuous discipline of social life, which adapts them more and more to social relations, is therefore the chief proximate cause of social progress. ”

“ The different economic, social, and moral questions connected with these various conditions, the illustrations of which could be multiplied indefinitely, may be, generally are, decided by each individual without reference to society at large. ”

“ Individuals, born or reared in any form of society are adjusted, shaped and conditioned by the social pattern of which they are a part. Each society attempts to stamp the individuals with its own image and likeness. ”

“ We have now seen, gentlemen, two periods of the world, each of which is dominated by the ruling idea of a particular class of the community which impresses its own principle on all the social arrangements of its time. ”

“ The moral aristocracy was mowed down in the name of uniformity; the social aristocracy is mowed down in the name of equality. For the second time an abstract principle, and with the same effect, buries its blade in the heart of a living society. ”

“ Let us not fail to note, in passing, how economic, ethical, and social forces act and react upon each other. It is only for academical purposes that we try to separate them; in reality they are inextricably interwoven. ”

“ Many other social forces, national character, ideas, customs—the whole inherited ethos of the people—individual peculiarities, love of power, sense of fair dealing, public opinion, conscience, local ties, family connections, civil legislation—all exercise upon industrial affairs as real an influence as personal interest, and, furthermore, they exercise an influence of precisely the same kind. They all operate ethically, through human will, judgment, motives, and in this respect one of them has no advantage over another. ”

“ A certain social sense is, therefore, the foundation upon which all concerted action rests; and this, permeating the character and winning conformity in the life, produces a social order which is at once the criterion of civilization and the source of its power. ”

“ Here our difficulty is to understand the social conditions, so unlike those with which we are acquainted, and as society is greater than man, so we feel that society, and not individual men, should occupy the chief place in the picture. ”

“ It gives habits of analyzing the aims and motives of men, and the means they employ to attain their ends, i.e., it gives insight into character and hence makes social adjustment easier.
(b) It develops tolerance for the opinions, convictions, and ideals of others, and tends to prevent hard, dogmatic, and uncompromising judgments and attitudes.
(c) It gives appreciation of the civic and political institutions of to-day—their origin, development, and purposes—and hence teaches the rights and obligations that are inherent in citizenship. ”

“ From such a 'status naturalis,' lacking both the natural and the rational principles of social development (the natural principle, i.e. the interest in others arising primarily from family ties, and the rational principle, i.e. the power of conceiving a good consisting in the more perfect being of the individual and of those in whom he is interested) , no process could be traced to the 'status civilis.' The two 'status' stand over against each other with an impassable gulf between. ”

“ Only after all their separate forms, from their most primitive to their most developed types, have been inductively determined and psychologically interpreted, can we gradually solve the riddle: “What is society in its essence?” ”

“ Moreover, the process of inner development results in differentiation of function. Clearly marked social classes come into existence, standing in more or less sharply defined relations to other social classes, endowed with special rights and called to the performance of peculiar duties. ”

“ The theory of these special societies—which are formed concentrically, so to speak, by each of us inside of the main body—gives the key to all the problems which arise from the opposition and conflict of the different varieties of social duty,—problems upon which the ancient tragedies are based. ”

“ The word social, then, is much broader than the words industrial, political, moral, religious, and embraces them all; that is, social phenomena are all phenomena which involve the interaction of two or more individuals. The word social, then, includes the economic, political, moral, religious, etc., and must not be thought of as something set in opposition to, for instance, the industrial or the political.
Society and its Products.—Beneath all the forms and processes of human society lies the fact of association itself. ”

“ Individual Rights vs. Social Duties.—The greatest weakness to be found in twentieth-century society is the disposition on the part of almost all individuals to place personal rights ahead of social duties. The modern spirit of individualism has grown strong since the Renaissance and the Reformation. ”

“ Who are they who are held to consider and solve all questions, and how did they fall under this duty?
So far as I can find out what the classes are who are respectively endowed with the rights and duties of posing and solving social problems, they are as follows: Those who are bound to solve the problems are the rich, comfortable, prosperous, virtuous, respectable, educated, and healthy; those whose right it is to set the problems are those who have been less fortunate or less successful in the struggle for existence. ”

“ The social state at any time existing, is the resultant of all the ambitions, self-interests, fears, reverences, indignations, sympathies, &c., of ancestral citizens and existing citizens. The ideas current in this social state must, on the average, lie congruous with the feelings of citizens, and therefore, on the average, with the social state these feelings have produced. ”

“ The economic conditions—which are the resultant of the ethnical energies and aptitudes acting in a given physical environment—are the determining basis of all the moral, juridical and political phenomenal manifestations of human life, both individual and social. ”

“ Social laws are universal laws, the same for all, and, like everything that is universal, they in numberless cases victimise. No matter how singular the individual may be, he is treated like every one else. ”

“ The society, once so homogeneous and co-ordinated in all its parts, would become at once a society rent by moral and social problems; and endless suffering must arise to individuals in the attempt to co-ordinate the ideals, manners, and institutions of the society to the new conditions! ”

“ There are ambitions, interests, customs, prejudices, conventionalities, and a thousand intangible forms of social force, that all react upon the individual man like so many conflicting winds and currents. ”

“ SOCIAL CONTROL.
Even when sociology outgrows the stage of vealiness, so that the question "What is society?" can be relegated from the beginning of a text-book to the end, we shall still feel the need of expressing in a few words the characteristics that mark off a true society from all manner of aggregates and combinations of men. ”

“ And this society is not a mere set of wealthy exclusives banded together against the rest of the world; it comprehends everybody.
One sees in the streets abundant evidence of these conditions of social relationship. ”

“ The subject-matter of sociology is, therefore, the forms or ways in which human beings exist beside, for, and with each other. The purposes for the sake of which these socializations come into being—economic and social, [2] religious and criminal, sexual and military, political and ethical, etc.—will be treated by other sciences. ”

“ Are men on the whole sane, or hysterical, or possibly paranoiac, in their attitude toward real and possible social conditions? Are the postulates of our social introspection valid or invalid? Have we learned all that can be known about the antecedents of present conditions, about the standards by which these conditions should be judged, about the type of future conditions toward which it is rational to aim, about the means at the disposal of man for the creation of a different social order? ”

“ Their social units they endow with religious beliefs, moral distinctions, a full-fledged ethical code, a sense of honor and self-respect, various ideals and valuations of conduct, and Heaven knows what besides—all of which, far from being instinctive, are products of education, and by their presence give signal proof that the more delicate devices of control have done their work so well that the cruder and more vigorous machinery need not be put into motion. ”

“ Each social formation, through each of its material activities, exerts its influence upon the civic whole; and each of its ideas and ideals wins also its place and power. ”

“ All I wish to enforce is, that the three common causes of the social and moral differences of individuals are to be found in race, organization, and circumstances—that none of us are entirely proof against the influence of these three conditions—the ethnological, the physiological, and the associative elements of our idiosincracy. ”

“ Laws and opinions of particular groups, group morality, individual morality, even inertia, and a long list of more subtle and often capricious reactions are channels through which social purpose finds expression. ”

“ Varieties of mankind, as we now find them, are social in different degrees; and, further, they are distinguished by different degrees of independence—are here tolerant of restraint and here intolerant of it. ”

“ Let us put the canon of equality in a different shape, namely, that there should always be a sufficient reason for any difference in the treatment of our fellows. This rule does not imply that I should act in all cases as though all men were equal in character or mind, but that my action should in all cases be justified by some appropriate consideration. ”

“ Constant Factors in Social Phenomena.—Our study of social life has made it plain that it is a complex affair, but it has been possible to classify society in certain groups, to follow the gradual extension of relations from small groups to large, and to take note of the numerous activities and interests that enter into contemporary group life. ”

“ The industrial, economic, domestic, civil, military, aesthetic, moral, religious, and intellectual condition of each community, is given in a systematic way, which brings out the relations of these social factors ”

“ The gradation in the changes that mark the social man justifies a corresponding gradation in the traits that distinguish the social aggregate from other aggregates.
The organic concept of society has taught us to look upon mutual aid, division of labor, formation of industrial groups, specialization and exchange with its facilities for communicating and transporting, as the underlying features of society, corresponding to the growing unlikeness of organs and functions, interdependence of parts and unity seen in living bodies. ”

“ It meant that the interest of the many instead of the few, the welfare of the whole instead of that of a part, were henceforth to be the paramount purpose of the social order and the goal of its evolution. ”

“ To make fully manifest the different social types that had been evolved under these different conditions, we have to compare not only the respective political constitutions but also the respective systems of social control. ”

“ How far is occupation, rather than association, responsible for the mental attitude and moral predilections? Do men in the same profession or trade, but representing different nationalities and different cultural groups, hold characteristic and identical opinions? To what extent is the social or political creed, that is, socialism, anarchism, syndicalism, etc., determined by occupation? by temperament? To what extent have social doctrine and social idealism superseded and taken the place of religious faith in the different occupations, and why? ”

“ Man has two selves, they say, the individual self, and the collective self of the organized state or nation. The study of history is, then, the study of this larger, corporate, social and civil self. The importance of this idea is thus brought out more clearly in its educational significance. For to learn this civil self is to learn the substantial condition which makes possible the existence of civilized man in all his other social combinations—the family, the Church, and the manifold associated activities of civil society. ”